Knock down pallet



Sept. 30, .1969 u. A. AHLENIUS KNOCK DOWN PAIJLET Filed May 15, 1968 INVENTOR. UND AHLE/V/US ATTORNEY United States Patent 3,469,542 KNOCK DOWN PALLET Uno A. Ahlenius, 550 Kenwood Drive, Menlo Park, Calif. 94025 Filed May 15, 1968, Ser. No. 729,237 Int. Cl. B65d 19/16, 19/26, 19/38 US. Cl. 10856 4 Claims ABSTRACT OF THE DISCLOSURE There is a present need for a lightweight, strong, rigid, inexpensive pallet for use with fork-lift trucks, and also for a pallet which can be easily assembled without tools at a desired point of use. When shipments of commodities are shipped out on pallets Without corresponding return loads, it is diflicult and expensive to return ordinary empty pallets to their point of origin, but the cost of such pallets ordinarily prohibits their being discarded at their destination.

It would be very desirable to have pallets which were either cheap enough to permit them to be discarded, or which could be easily disassembled and packed in a small space for return shipment. Also for a pallet made of easily assembled inexpensive members which can be assembled without the use of tools or fasteners at their point of use.

Such a pallet is provided by the present invention, and is disclosed in the following specification and accompanying drawings, wherein:

FIG. 1 is a perspective view of a pallet embodying the present invention, the lift arms of a fork-lift truck being shown in dot-dash lines inserted in the two rows of aligned notches provided therefor in the lower edges of one of the two sets of parallel, upright members forming the pallet.

FIG. 2 is a fragmentary, exploded, perspective view showing one of the notched, upright members of one set thereof in upwardly spaced relation to its notches in the other set of members with which it is interfitted in the pallet shown in FIG. 1.

FIG. 3 is an enlarged, fragmentary, sectional view taken along line 3-3 of FIG. 1.

Referring to the drawings in detail, a plurality of boardlike members a, 10b, 10c and 10d comprise one set of members forming a pallet A, FIG. 1, the members being of equal length, and each member having an equal plurality of correspondingly spaced member-receiving notches 11 in their upper edges to receive, in snugly interfitted relation, the members 12a,- 12b, 12c and 12d, comprising the second set of said members.

The members 12a-d of the second set of said members have member-receiving notches 13 in their lower edges which are similar to and may be spaced similarly to the notches 11 of the members 10a-d.

The complementary depth of a member-receiving notch 11in one of the members 12a-d, plus the depth of a corresponding notch 13 in one of the members 12a-d, is such that when the notched portions of the two sets of members 10 and 12 are in interseated relation, as shown in FIGS. 1 and 3, the upper edges of at least one of the two sets of members will define a flat surface. Preferably,

all of the notches 11 and 13 of both sets of the members 10 and 12 are of a depth equal approximately to one-half the width of the members themselves. The notches 11 and 13 in the two sets of members 10 and 12 are aligned in rows, and the sides of all of the notches are parallel to each other and to the center line of their respective rows.

The two sets of members 1010-11 and 1211-01 are interfitted to form a grid-like pattern as shown in FIG. 1, with a notched portion of each member interfitted with a notched portion of its respective member of the other set to form a joint referred to herein as a half-notch joint of the type shown in FIG. 3.

Each of the members of both sets of members 10 and 12 have two lift-arm-receiving notches 14 and 15 in their lower edges, these notches being spaced apart to receive the arms 17 and 18, respectively (FIG. 1), of a fork-lift truck for which the pallets of the present invention are intended.

The members 10 and 12 preferably are interfitted in sufiiciently close relation that the members of the two sets will remain firmly assembled by friction during normal usage without the use of adhesive or other securing means. If desired, however, the members 10 and 12 may be assembled in permanently interconnected relation, as by means of a suitable adhesive in the joints, or may be releasably interconnected by suitable latch, screw or other or other fastening means in a manner that will be obvious to any reasonably skilled mechanic.

A preferred material for making the members 10 and 12 is exterior grade plywood of suitable thickness for the size of pallet being constructed and the type of duty for which it is intended. Plywood has several advantages for making pallets embodying the present invention, since it is relatively inexpensive, of uniform grade and thickness, withstands weathering well, has substantially uniform strength in all directions, and is easily worked. The use of a material of uniform thickness is important, since otherwise members for the same sets of different pallets would not be interchangeable, and it is desirable to have all of the members for each set 10 and 12 interchangeable with other members of the same set. By this arrangement, when a shipment of goods mounted on pallets is delivered to a destination, and it is desired to return the empty pallets to their point of origin, all of the pallets can be disassembled and their parts intermixed indiscriminately, and still may be easily and quickly reassembled into pallets when desired.

In using the present invention, where it is desired to assemble the pallets at or near their point of use, the pallets may be delivered at or near their desired point ,of use in knock-down form, that is, sufiicient numbers of members 10 and 12, regardless of their specific conformation, to form, when assembled as shown, for example in FIG. 1, a required number of pallets. It is obvious that for lighter loads a lesser number of the grid members 10 and 12 may be employed or that they may be made of thinner material. When necessary, as in the case of small or deformable objects to be loaded on the pallets, a base layer of suitable material, such as plywood or cardboard (not shown), may be laid on the pallet before loading.

The pallet is so light and rigid that it is highly desirable for use in air freight delivery, and is so inexpensive that it frequently will be more economical to simply dispose of the pallets as scrap at the destination than to disassemble and return them to the point of origin.

A simple method of disassembling the pallets, when that is desired, is to insert the lift arms 17 and 18 of a conventional fork-lift truck (not shown) in the notches 14 and 15 of the set of members 12 having their memberreceiving notches 13 in their lower edges. Then, while restraining the members 10 of the other set by any suitable means against upward movement, the fork-lift arms 3 are raised sufficiently to free the members 12 from those of the other set.

The invention provides a simple, strong, lightweight and rigid pallet, the parts for which can be quickly and easily made from inexpensive material by relatively unskilled labor, and which can be assembled at the point of use without the use of tools or fastening. In its knockeddown form the parts for a large number of pallets occupy very little space.

For a specific size of pallet, any set of members 10, selected at random, can be interfitted with any similarly selected set of members 12. Also, an important factor for ease and simplicity in manufacturing the pallets resides in the fact that the members 10 and 12 may be identical, except that the member-receiving notches 11 are in opposite edges of the members 10 from those 13 in the members 12 relative to the lift-arm-receiving notches 14 and 15 in the lower edges of both sets of the members.

While I have illustrated and described a preferred embodiment of the present invention, it will be understood, however, that various changes and modifications may be made in the details thereof.

I claim:

1. A knock-down pallet for use with a. fork-lift truck having parallel lift arms spaced a known distance apart, said pallet comprising two sets of upright, board-like members having designated upper and lower edges and assembled with the members of each set in laterally spaced, parallel relation to each other, the members of one set being disposed at a selected angle to those of the other set to define a grid,

each member of one set having a plurality of spaced,

member-receiving, upright notches in the upper edge thereof,

each member of the other set having a plurality of spaced, member-receiving, upright notches in the lower edge thereof,

the member-receiving notched portions of the members 4 of each set being located to register with the memberreceiving notched portions of the other set,

the members of both sets being pressed into half-notchjoint relation with each other,

the uppermost portions of the members of at least one set defining a flat, load bearing, top surface, and the lowermost portions of the members of at least one set defining a flat, supporting, bottom surface substantially parallel to said flat top surface, and

each member of each set having two lift-arm-receiving notches in the lower edge thereof spaced apart and aligned in rows to receive selectively therein the lift arms of such fork-lift truck.

2. A pallet as defined in claim 1 wherein the members of both sets are of plywood.

3. A pallet as defined in claim 1 wherein the portions defining the sides of the notches in the members of both sets thereof are spaced apart by a distance to receive a member of the other set in such closely interfitted, internotched relation therein as to retain said other member therein by friction alone during normal usage of the pallet.

4. A pallet as defined in claim 1 wherein all of the members of each set are identical and interchangeable with each other and with members of the same corresponding set of other similar pallets.

References Cited UNITED STATES PATENTS 2,615,661 10/1952 Cushman 108-52 2,709,559 5/1955 Geisler 1085 1 2,928,638 3/1960 Parker 108-52 3,000,603 9/1961 Hemann 108-56 3,113,532 12/1963 White 108-56 3,131,656 5/1964 Houle 108-56 BOBBY R. GAY, Primary Examiner GLENN O. FINCH, Assistant Examiner U.S. Cl. X.R. 108-5 8 

